Every English parish church is
unique: every visit to an English parish church is a
unique event. There is a danger in following the
formulaic guide books, and only seeing what they see when
looking through their eyes. Each visit then becomes a
trail through familiar territory. In reality, each
building is a record of its personal history, the result
of its centuries of buffeting, a visible echo of the long
generations who saw it as the heart of their community.
They are organic, reflective of their place, not merely
conforming to an ideal, each a true original. No English
parish church has ever seen inside another.

The long centuries, however, are not
guarantors of the future. Just because these buildings
have been with us for so long does not mean they will
survive forever. For centuries before the Reformation
they were sacramental touchstones to the mystical power
of the Catholic Church. This became translated after the
Reformation, and if they were no longer magical they were
still held in awe as homes of communities at worship, as
well as the focus of secular power. They were the heart
of the parish, which recorded the ordinary man's birth
and death, and regulated his life in between.

The Victorians tried to reintroduce
some of the old medieval magic, and in so doing massively
increased church-going in both the parish churches and
the non-conformist chapels. Perhaps as much as half the
population attended church regularly in the mid-19th
century, almost unimaginable today.

But this could not last. Today, the
Church of England has far too many churches, and many of
them are wholly unsuitable for their modern use,
especially in winter. In addition, the heritage lobby not
unreasonably fights for the survival of the large number
of churches of architectural and artistic importance -
there are perhaps fifty churches in Norfolk and Suffolk
the loss of which would be a tragedy of international
significance.

But the loss of any medieval church
would be a tragedy, if only because it has been a
touchstone of one kind or another for so many
generations. We have seen the heart go out of villages
that have lost their church to redundancy in the last
quarter of a century, and it is hard to see a sustainable
future for many of those that survive, as congregations
age and dwindle. If the mass of ordinary English medieval
churches are to survive, then they cannot depend on the
needs of the Church of England, or the priorities of
heritage groups.

No, the key to their survival is
the communities themselves, both the immediate
residential community, and the wider area which is richer
for having these beating hearts scattered throughout it.
One district of Norfolk that knows this is Wayland, where
the village churches have been central to a European
Community-led initiative. They are a focus for tourism,
for projects by local school children (absolutely
essential this, it gives local young people a stake in
their future) and are generally given a high profile. The
Wayland Partnership is being studied closely by local
authorities elsewhere.

Outside of Wayland, of course,
Norfolk is full of other parish churches in small towns
and villages, and their future must be considered
uncertain. They may be in the hearts of those who love
them, but bureaucrats in Norwich and London make
decisions with their heads, not their hearts.
Romantically, Norfolk's sleepy lanes are home to the
greatest concentration of medieval buildings in western
Europe, but in crude modern terms this means that Norfolk
is highly over-resourced, and maintainance needs-heavy.
What must be done? Cheap short term solutions or a
commitment to more expensive long-term strategies?

This introduction links to six
ordinary parish churches, past and present. They are all
within a few miles of each other in a small area of north
Norfolk. They have distinguished neighbours: Cley,
Blakeney, Binham and Walsingham are all close at hand.
Apart from Holt, they all serve tiny communities. Apart
from Bayfield, they are all still working churches in use
by the Anglicans; I have included Bayfield, perhaps, as a
warning. To all intents and purposes the rest are just
ordinary churches. All of them are special, of course,
especially to the people who use them, or have used them,
or have ancestors who used them. But they are bread and
butter churches, typical of hundreds of others,
thousands, all over England. Unique as they are, their
continued survival is a shared problem, the key to their
future a shared solution.